Dr. Vaneet Kaur Assistant Professor, Kent State University at Stark Ohio, USA

JK News Today Special 

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, pandemic has upended gazillions of lives, howbeit coronavirus and its concomitants have whorled the world of students incalculably. As soon as the tsunami of uncertainties and upheavals of Covid-19 swept the firmament, schools and colleges began closing and social distancing became the norm. All so sudden, yet all pervasive that the youth was witnessing not just new lingo in the news but also the dawn of unprecedented mores that triggered onslaught of traumatic events and resultant unfortunate psychological impacts.

The disruptions caused by Covid-19 have generated dark clouds of mental health issues which are looming large on student population. Since young people are wired to rely on peer relationships to a greater extent than adults, new realities of home quarantines, social distancing and missed celebrations of milestones like graduation are taking a huge toll on students. Add to it, dormitory evacuation, cancellation of anticipated events like exchange studies, the inanimation owing to isolation, disappearance of summer jobs and internships, cancellation or postponement of entrance exams, and the anxiety of final year students about uncertain job market that they are going to enter soon – it comes as no surprise that students are reporting major mental health strains. Anxiety, depression, and suicide are all on the rise, and victims of suicide are getting tragically younger – the generation which is our future.

Even a normal educational journey of a student is associated with many stressors and transitional events, and students fall within the age range when common mental health problems are at their developmental peak. Unfortunately, the additional stress placed on students in this post-corona world hallmarked by billions of young people worldwide pushed out of their agreeable places of learning served as a humongous impediment. Since school and college routines are prime coping mechanisms for young people with mental health issues, when educational institutions were closed, students just lost the anchor they were holding onto in their lives. 

Coronavirus has impacted students globally in myriad forms:

 

Loss of De-Facto Mental Health System

Universities, colleges, and schools are “the de facto mental health system” for many children and adolescents in the west. Closures of educational institutions has had adverse effects for students hailing from lower-income families, who commonly receive mental health services exclusively from their educational institutions.

 

Novel Ways of Learning & Academic Performance

Research shows that mental health and academic achievement are correlated. Chronic stress changes the chemical and physical structure of the brain, impairing cognitive skills like attention, concentration, memory, and creativity. A major stress for students in post-corona world that is impacting their performance is springing from the fact that they must rewire their brains to learn in an online environment. There are a lot of educators that rely on in-class participation, but now grading is different leaving students with no choice than to adapt at a super-sonic speed. New requirements like online discussions and virtual assignments are adding more things to students’ to-do list to add to the existing stress levels.

 

Exacerbating problems

Grave issues like public health crisis, social isolation, and economic recession attacked from all four directions at once to blow students with compounded effects thereby worsening the existing mental health problems. Children and adolescents are not untouched from adult issues such as parental unemployment or loss of household income and are thus exposed to extreme bereavement much before their years.

 

Disproportionate Impacts

Educational institutions were once referred to schools as the “great equalizers,” yet the pandemic exposed the underlying inequities and disparities. More vulnerable populations are harder hit by campus closures and the subsequent loss of campus resources. The potential for a more negative impact on some minorities and underserved populations like daily-wage earners and migrant laborers is daunting. The world is full of such underprivileged families who cannot even afford two meals a day, but which dared to provide education to their children and then make electronic gadgets and internet connectivity a necessity for education. One can only imagine the societal pressures to purchase luxuries on an empty stomach and the depressions stemming from relinquished dreams of education.

 

Jolt to World’s Largest Youth Population

Aiming to control community transmission, when the world’s largest democracy implemented world’s largest nationwide lockdown, the largest youth population in the world – 600 million Indians below the age of 25 – faced maximal brunt. In a country where a student’s future largely depends on high stakes exit exams, the indefinite postponement of the 12th grade CBSE, ICSE and other exams further inflamed mental pressures. While it might seem like the obvious solution for many graduating high school seniors in the US, considering a gap year is not a readily accepted path for most Indian students. The reasons are both practical as well as cultural. There is a lack of structured internships or gap year programs in India making the educational pathway for an Indian student remarkably linear, rigid, and competitive and detours such as a gap year still carry the stigma of being unnecessary distractions.

Additionally, Indian students have an almost 134-year documented history of obtaining a foreign degree from Western nations and since for most Indian students, the pursuit of going abroad is a long journey that begins many years prior to embarking on the actual degree, reflecting years’ worth of aspirations, hard work and family savings. Given these investments and Indian settings, students’ disappointments and disillusions multiplied manifold.

 

Internet Ban & Lost Opportunities

One cannot even imagine the woeful situation and resultant mental status of students residing in Jammu & Kashmir who lost access to not only educational resources and experiences, growth opportunities but also the only option to socialize in lockdown due to ban on internet in the region. When students around the world are feeling pressures of demonstrating efficiencies in remote learning environment on a 5G network, talk about privileges of students of Jammu & Kashmir trying to learn on a barely there 2G internet speed and bandwidth! The lack of infrastructure and even faith in the youth has exasperated and tormented young minds pushing them to a brink of psychological crisis. 

 

To conclude, the global post-COVID landscape has definitely led to an increase in mental health issues such as chronic stress, anxiety, depression, drug dependence and self-harm. Recent evidence in psychosocial sciences also show that similar pandemics increased the prevalence of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as confusion, feeling of loneliness, boredom, and anger during and after quarantine. Consequently, when campuses reopen, many students may feel behind, compared to a typical school year and the proliferation of learning gaps might be more evident than ever before. Hence, the trauma of the pandemic will likely outlast the virus itself, and we as society must get equipped to provide appropriate and equitable mental health support to zillions of students grappling the countless traumas, griefs, and anxieties.